


Tea

by Ratzinger



Series: Needle's Eye of Time [5]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: 20th Century, Age Difference, Allegory, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fetishizing the Mundane, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Modern AU, Political Allegory, Power Imbalance, Realism, Slice of Life, Sorry Not Sorry, Unhealthy Relationships, Vague Communal Apartment Aesthetic, With a Hint of Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:41:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28883325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ratzinger/pseuds/Ratzinger
Summary: She should have never taken that last gig. She should have never fallen through that last door, despite the pickings having been slim with death at her heels. She should have never gotten into the habit of talking to strangers.All of this, Ciri realises, when she hears the knocking on her door.But this world itself, this regime is a stranger. And hindsight is 20/20.
Relationships: Avallac'h | Crevan Espane aep Caomhan Macha/Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon
Series: Needle's Eye of Time [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655209
Comments: 17
Kudos: 16





	Tea

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry.

Three knocks.

Dust hovers above oilcloth in a beam of dusky light penetrating the lace curtains of the kitchen. The former communal apartment in the four-storeyed, grey-brick house located on the dead-end street is dark. A single street lamp erected, as per regulation, in front of the kindergarten has lit up five, maybe six minutes ago. The children have gone home.

In the small kitchen – squashed between the cylindrical washing machine and the refrigerator, where the bucket with old newspapers usually goes – sits her who is not at home. With her knees drawn against her chest, she sits on a three-legged stool, and listens. The refrigerator has gone quiet and with it the rest of the two rooms that she can call her own.

A bedside clock ticks behind the wall.

This is the only place in the apartment where you would not be able to see a person should you decide to check through the windows. Facing the street, the ground floor windows are not very high off the pavement. If someone wanted to, they could support their foot on the protruding line of bricks above the grated cellar windows and pull themselves up by the windowsill. They would not see between the refrigerator and the washing machine though, not unless they decided to enter through the window.

They have not decided to enter through the window.

They have decided to knock.

_Gently-gently, on and on, rolls and steams ahead, the light blue wagon._

Dull pain reminds itself to her in the lower abdomen. The silence presses down upon her windpipe, spreading nasty, prickling warmth down her arms and chest. This is a mistake. This is simply someone who did not notice the uncollected mail downstairs, who has confused the dates, perhaps even the addresses.

The clock ticks.

The light fades.

Three knocks.

Ciri closes her eyes. Exhales. Carefully, she lowers her legs to the floor.

Half the infernal heat that has gathered in her throat falls away when she stands – there’s no one on the window. It picks up again when she takes a step and hears the beginning of a creak of the floor board. Clutching the knife hidden behind her forearm, she lifts the crappy, yellow oilcloth, and slides the blade in-between the table top and the drawer. The kitchen window does not have grating, the frames have not been taped – she can clear out in five moves, and then...

She makes it into the narrow hallway and they have not knocked again. The girl holds her breath, eyeing the padded front door: the chain, the rim lock, the lower one. They have not knocked again. Slowly, silently, she breathes out. Perhaps they have realised? Perhaps they have left?

The lower lock emits a strange sound.

The door handle presses down.

They simply won’t knock for the third time. She walks up to the door, flips the upper lock, and places her hand on the handle, pulling. The pressure on the other side of the handle lets up, the chain rattles. She yanks.

‘Who are you looking for?’ she demands loudly, ready to run.

Silence.

She pushes against the door, but feels a foot apply pressure from down below. _Five moves_. But they’ll just take the stairs and catch her outdoors. It will not work, unless they press in first.

The yellow light in the bleached turquoise corridor blinks rapidly and she hears the stranger move as the pressure applied to the door intensifies for a moment. A shadow appears in the gap she has created. In the low light, she catches a glimpse of strands of blonde hair tucked behind the edge of a sharp ear, sharp features sunken behind a raised collar.

The girl’s stomach jolts as she hears the familiar voice:

‘Are you alone that you would rather pretend not to be here at all?’

Through the lamp’s buzzing and her blood pumping in her ears she hears Ninsk-15 start up in the kitchen. _Not here. Not now. How? How did he find me?_ Her insides churn as she stares at the intruder from the darkness. A gloved finger rises to the thin chain. _Five moves. Fifteen? Forty-five..._ She should not have returned here today, Ciri thinks, lifting a shaking hand to the chain and sliding it out of its socket.

‘There you are,’ the elf says, smiling down at her and twining his hands in front of him as the door opens before him with a creak. ‘Good evening, Ciri.’

_My name. My true name._

The stairway looks deserted. A faint smell of sausage and burnt meat-sauce lingers from earlier, but the veteran who cooks this does not seem to be hosting the local tipplers in his bootleg-liquor den tonight. No clatter of the third-floor window. No radio that usually plays incessantly, drowning out the fighting. It’s sickeningly quiet for once.

Under low ceilings, in the cramped corridor of this grey-brick building, he is even taller than she remembers. Tailored overcoat hangs off broad shoulders, a web of melted frost gleaming off dark green wool and long black boots under the ugly yellow light dripping off the walls. There is no one else. He has come alone. Perhaps then...

‘Well,’ the man says softly, too softly, the leather of his gloves creaking. ‘Will you invite me inside?’

An aberrant fever conjoins with the adrenaline flushing under her skin at his request, and her thoughts begin running on twin tracks, as always happens in times of meltdown. She does not want him to come inside. She does not want anyone to come. However, for the moment, she lacks a clearer plan.

Wordlessly, she shuffles aside, and the elf smiles.

‘You left so suddenly, my dear girl. I admit, though we still know each other only so briefly, I already feel responsible before you. Will you not share with me, what scared you off?’

She closes the door, leaves the chain down, and slides her fingers along the padding, listening to the floorboards creak under the weight of his steps. Everything sounds terribly loud. Everything sounds like an accusation, admonishing her for her folly.

_Iskra was right. I should have never taken that gig._

Words of the overheard conversation in the witching hour before dawn ring in her head and fill her with dread. Does he know? About her, about her parents? Has he come to –?

_What does he expect?_

‘I had work,’ she lies, turning. ‘People depend on me.’

‘To recognise one’s duty to one’s country at such a tender age. How fine! If only more people were like you, Ciri,’ there is amusement in the man’s voice. ‘How was work?’

Ciri swallows.

‘Tiring. Rewarding. Full of screams and charges,’ that part is true. ‘I work at the kindergarten.’

‘The very same across the street?’

She nods.

The elf stands silently in the narrow hallway between the living room and the front door, taking up most of it in the twilight. Shadows move on the triangular face, gaping with darkness where she remembers eyes and a mouth. A shiver runs down her spine, and the dull ache in the lower abdomen re-appears.

The clock ticks.

‘You have no idea,’ he says at last, ‘how happy it makes me to hear this, Ciri.’

She doesn’t. Neither does she care.

‘Shall we sit?’

Brushing against the lapels of the elf’s overcoat she presses past him. In the kitchen, she flicks the switch and the bare light bulb under the ceiling buzzes to life, lazily gathering strength. No use in pretending there is no one around anymore.

Ciri sits down with her back to the window, on the side where she has hidden the knife under the crappy yellow oilcloth.

The elf does not follow instantly. He strolls through the space of the entire living room – the little there is of it – slinking beside the carpeted walls, stopping briefly before the rickety divider screen in front of her bed and before the double doors with glass inlay. Ever since the owner to three quarters of this apartment reached a settlement in the common property separation case, these doors have remained firmly locked. You can see the outlines of chairs piled on top of each other through the glass. The other lodger – a distant relative of some sort – hasn’t been back to get his things. Perhaps for reasons on occasion of which they would eventually notify third parties. Perhaps for reasons about which they don’t expect you to ask questions.

_Shouldn’t he know if these walls have ears or not?_

Eventually, Avallac’h joins her. He picks up the three-legged stool on which Ciri had perched earlier and sits behind the rectangular table between the girl and the doorway, facing the street. The oilcloth is grimy on his end – she filleted a fat _mumps_ there before all things went to pot.

For a minute, or two, the man studies her intently. Like looking for an epiphany among tea leaves. It’s uncomfortable; she averts her gaze. Then, a few words fly off the elf’s tongue; nicely.

Ciri frowns.

It sounds like a variant of Elder Speech – a dying language – but faster, sharper. Just when she thinks she gets the meaning, the grammar somersaults and garbage takes its place. She is confused. Eyeing her closely, he repeats himself, and the only thing Ciri understands this time is her own name; elven in origin. Perhaps her birth-parents thought it would make things easier for her. Perhaps they didn’t think anything at all.

Aquamarine eyes look at her with pity.

‘What?’ she bursts, forgetting herself for a moment when he is about to repeat himself for the third time. ‘What are you saying? You see I cannot understand you.’

‘I asked if you are not cold in here.’

‘The boiler broke down,’ she replies. ‘I’m used to it.’

‘But it was nicer at mine, wasn’t it?’

Her throat burns, and her collarbones. She blinks slowly, biting the inside of her lip.

‘I am not surprised,’ he continues. ‘I am not at all surprised, Ciri, that a pretty girl like yourself would arrive at the capital and hope for something more than... this. These post-war cubicles – I would not keep a pack of half-breds in pens like these, believe me. Much less a young, sensitive girl.’

‘It is not that bad,’ she says tightly. ‘As I said, I’m used to it.’

‘It is truly fortunate we get to live at this latitude, isn’t it? They do not make them much better in the far-east, I hear. Do you know what it’s like, Ciri, at the end of the tracks?’

_At the end of the tracks, where asphalt ends. Where the guard pushes us onto a road of bones._

‘Cold?’

‘Yes, Ciri,’ he nods solemnly. ‘Very-very cold. White. Silent. And cold.’

For a moment something reverent and hallow, almost holy, enters his pale aquamarine eyes, and he reminds the girl of a teacher or, perhaps, a priest? A priest to what? Such thoughts are criminal. She does not think such thoughts. Those who think such thoughts are not at home – they went out in the morning and never came back.

‘Offer me a drink.’

‘What kind of drink?’

‘Rosé.’

‘I don’t –’

‘Of course you don’t, sun. Is there seltzer?’

‘There is no seltzer.’

‘Then what is there?’

Ciri shifts on the chair, thinking.

‘Apricot soda.’

‘An herbal infusion will do.’

She begins to rise, hesitating – barely noticeably – over leaving the table where the knife sits securely hidden, but rises just the same. She’ll make tea. She doesn’t understand why he calls it an infusion. She doesn’t understand many things elves insist upon. It does not matter. Her head hurts. Tea. That puts her by the window and with her back to him.

‘You should know I was not trying to make fun of you when I asked if you were cold in here,’ she hears as the tap splutters water into the kettle with chipped enamel. ‘I have heard you speak our language. You understand what I am saying. You just don’t... you have forgotten. Forgotten what was never taught to you.’

‘I think it doesn't make sense to forget what one hasn’t learned in the first place,’ she replies. ‘I speak basic Elder very well.’

‘You are certainly a very smart girl. However,’ she hears a quiet snort, ‘there are limits to the expectations we can have of kindergarten teachers in the districts.’

Ciri fishes out a box of matches from behind an aloe pot, hoping, no, praying, the elf does not pursue the lie. She wouldn’t be able to cover for herself, unless the school director is lacking in something she can “procure” for them overnight.

_What does he want from me?_

Blue flames spring up in a violent hooray.

‘Careful now, sun.’

He speaks to her as if she was a stupid child. He did not speak to her like this at first. She sets the kettle down on the blue blossom, staring out into the street through thin lace curtains. At the single lamp in the gloom.

‘How do you feel today?’

‘Fine,’ she replies quickly and on instinct. ‘I am fine, thank you.’

‘I am glad to hear that. Would you believe if I said I felt very sad to discover you gone?’

She grips the edges of the stove, trying to block out the familiarity with which he addresses her. Somehow it had not bothered her earlier. Somehow she had thought this idea would be as good an idea as any other she had tried so far.

‘It’s very fortunate I know how to find you, Ciri. When you took off in such unnecessary hurry you see, you left something I thought you would appreciate having returned to you.’

There is a faintest, muffled sound against the faded oilcloth. She looks over her shoulder, trying to ignore the bright eyes that she knows observe and absorb her every move.

Her breath hitches.

She looks away.

_He knows..._

The teapot begins its rattling. She lifts it off the flames, turns off the gas, and reaches for a cup. Brown, crumpled tealeaves fall to the bottom, steaming water pours on top. The kitchen window has begun to fog over. Leaning across the table, she sets the cup down in front of the elf a little harder than necessary; it spills and the droplets hit the wolf-head medallion.

Ciri sits.

‘You look so scared,’ the elf notes, smiling like a friendly neighbour returning a cup of sugar. ‘Is there reason to be scared of me? I don’t bite.’

‘What do you want?’ she demands.

‘At the moment, I would like a drink.’

‘You have it.’

He does a thing with his lips. ‘Let us not argue, Zireael.’

It has a lost elegance to it, the way her name sounds on his tongue like this.

‘Do you know anything about him?’

‘Perhaps.’

Her heart skips a beat.

‘Is he alive? Whe-where is he? When will –’

‘Gently, gently now,’ he hushes her and she feels her nails digging into her palms, her neck warm – the anxiety scraping her throat having escaped its boundaries at last. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For starters, you should learn to ask me for these things nicely.’

He covers the silver medallion with his palm and pushes it toward her. The moment he lifts his hand she snatches it, cradling it against her chest. It’s all she has left. ~~~~

‘I, too, do not like to lose things,’ the man says surprisingly warmly. ‘Dear, precious things into which one has invested a big part of themselves.’

_We have not lost each other. We will meet again. I am sure of it._

‘It is interesting to me how strong your attachment is to this... killer.’

The leaden knowledge solidifies; he knows. He is not what he seems.

‘You don’t know him.’

‘He taught you, did he not? Took care of you in his own way in your most vulnerable years. He must be something like a father to you,’ he tilts forward a little, as if about to share a secret. ‘Much more so, certainly, than the man who sired you.’

And Ciri feels like she has been drenched by a passing van on the corner of Victory and Commandant’s.

‘How do you know about... about my father?’ she whispers, curling her legs around the worn stool legs.

_Imperialist father._

‘Oh, Ciri!’ he laughs. ‘Do you honestly believe our paths would have crossed if I did not possess the answers to all of your problems?’

She doesn’t know. She thinks... she thinks they met because his had been the nearest door. Because it had been cold and the streets ice-capped, because busses wouldn’t run anymore, because her friends’ plans had gotten too ambitious, and the system’s contempt too voracious, and there had been nowhere else. They met because his was the nearest door to somewhere the Skeleton on her tracks could not follow. She had no idea...

He fishes out a small purple vial from the hidden pocket of his coat and uncorks it with a pop. The black gloves make a crinkling sound. One, two, three, four drops fall into the steaming cup.

‘What is that?’

‘This is what you will have, Ciri.’

‘What is that?’ she repeats, planting her feet firmly on the floor; leaning her weight on the right one.

‘So curious,’ playful dimples appear in the corners of his mouth. ‘So many questions. To learn, to learn, and to learn! Well, that is good. I had almost begun to think I had only imagined that bold-looking young lady who crashed my looking glasses amidst her pirouettes.’

‘I won’t drink it.’

‘You wound me, sun. May I have a spoon, please?’ he asks. ‘Oh, never mind, I shall help myself.’

The elf rises abruptly. The floorboards groan. Ciri tugs at the table drawer, opening it and pulling it out almost against her belly, knowing that he sees the carving knife that slides out with it in the process. _It’s better than him finding it on his own._ It feels like barbed-wire sprouts around her skeleton; it feels like being driven to the train station in the middle of the night. She picks a teaspoon from its compartment – one with a small, pink dwarf at its tail – and lets the blade drop into the drawer, where it belongs. As if nothing was amiss, she closes the drawer and sets the spoon on the table, looking at him looking at her from above.

The light bulb buzzes.

_Don’t look away. Don’t look away now._

‘Please make me another, Ciri.’

She hears him move around as she re-fills the kettle with icy water.

The spoon clinks against the cup; black leather gloves flip onto the table. No longer making any attempts at hiding the glances she is now constantly throwing over her shoulders, she glances at the small smile that wounds across the elf’s lips as he closes the kitchen door. Ciri hits the lid on the pot and wipes her hand into her thin trousers. Floor boards creak. Out of the corner of her left eye, she sees him stopping before the foggy kitchen window.

‘I can tell you right now that as of three months ago your adoptive father was still alive,’ he says and unbelievable hope sprouts within Ciri’s heart, despite and in spite of seeing him secure the lock on the window frame. ‘It’s cold at the end of the tracks, but hopefully... Hopefully, Ciri. We must all hope, mustn’t we? Nobody denies the peril of securing virgin lands for our people, you understand, but in the name of our great struggle, sacrifices must be made. And Geralt – he volunteered.’

 _They all say that. They say they all “volunteer.”_ Yet another match breaks between her fingers. _Mummy did not. Mummy..._

‘At least that’s what my colleague tells me. He can be believed on counts – usually.’

_... mummy is not here._

Footsteps.

A whiff of sulphur and blue flames bloom under cheap lace curtains.

‘Here, let me help you see how this goes.’

She is too frustrated, too expectant of a blow, too caught up with imagining an entire world of possibilities in place of the single, unspeakable one now that she knows Geralt is alive. Too frozen because of that junk boiler that will never get fixed, and because of the constant fear that overworks her. Too everything, in short, to register the breath against her numb ear, to protest against the loose half-embrace in which the elf envelops her.

He clucks his tongue, long fingers reaching around hers toward the blue ring of fire: ‘Who would have thought you would not know how to make one, hm? Who would have thought in a bleak and lonely place like this, you would not allow yourself small comforts.’

Her comfort is a filleted _mumps_ , a heart of a katakan shrivelling into the size of a prune, a moneylender who ruins little girls falling from the fifth floor. Her comfort is not herbal tea!

She wants to say.

But she does not say.

‘Self-preservation is an important skill, Ciri,’ Avallac’h says quietly behind her ear, and the girl blinks as the flames reduce, then grow as of their own accord, warming the kettle. ‘I know it was not work that made you run from me.’

She is not seeing right, surely? A shiver descends along her back, her eyes widening, and she is certain he can feel it too, touching faintly, as he is against her slender back.

‘Particularly the kind of work you would have me believe you do,’ he chuckles. ‘It’s alright, Ciri. I understand, I do. We are all victims of our pasts, of ourselves. Aren’t we? You, for instance, cannot possibly believe in being able to raise children in a way that saves them from becoming what you hunt. What you are drawn to. Monsters, Ciri. Am I right?’

‘Are you going to take me away?’ she whispers. ‘Are you here to finish –’

‘Do you want me to take you away? Turn you in?’ he sounds a little surprised. ‘Silly. Why, I only just found you!’

‘Then what is it that you want in exchange for... for –’

She doesn’t know which of her wishes should take priority at the moment. Remembering the look in the elf’s eyes, she doesn’t know if one of those wishes isn’t contrary to what he might wish to name as the price.

 _Five moves. Fifteen. Forty-five. Hundred and thirty five. Four hundred and..._ It’s too much for her. _Mother. God. The angels must be drunk. Mother. God. When will the summer start?_

‘For my help, sun?’

Small blue flames under the kettle dance merrily. Pale puffs of her breath join with thin streams of steam rising like smoke from numerous small chimneys along an avenue of cold suns. It’s a pretty illustration on the enamel – chipped, imperfect, and unattainable. Cold suns aren’t suns – they’re as stars on Earth; dead.

She doesn’t hear more from him for a while.

The clock ticks behind the wall.

Fingertips touch behind her ear, stroking softly along the small, soft ashen hair that curls along her neck.

She flinches and the elf mutters something, inhaling her scent. A name? Not hers, she thinks. She doesn’t understand. She cannot parse this. It only works to tug stronger at the bottom of her stomach, which remembers better the things that never happened than she remembers words that she never learned.

‘I don’t –’

More words.

‘I don’t understand –’

‘I know you don’t,’ Avallac’h snaps.

Fingers tangle in small hair, pinching the skin of her neck.

‘I know you don’t,’ he repeats much more tenderly. ‘You should eat more, Ciri. You should keep warm. You should not talk to strangers. Such is a recipe for a long and pleasant life.’

To the rustling of fabric, she feels the elf’s arms move around her, pressing her against him, and the charged, heavy silence of sparrows impaled on barbed wire that has gathered inside her rushes upward, uncontrolled. His smell is everywhere around and inside again, mingling with the nasty aroma of burnt cooking from the stairway. Instinctively, her elbow jerks sharply back, connects, and she throws her weight against his left arm, which, to the girl’s dismay hardly budges from its hold around her.

Someone somewhere unreachable switches on the radio.

‘Gently, gently, my sun,’ he whispers into her hair with vaguest notes of displeasure. ‘I will not do anything unusual. Tell me, where does it hurt still? Here?’

‘I am not your sun!’

‘And why not?’ the elf’s palm is warm as it slides under the cardigan, over the tender skin of the girl’s abdomen. ‘Here?’

‘No! I – ah!’

‘Behold: an “ah”.’

Long fingers press down, rubbing patiently and methodically under her waistband. She remembers it had felt good too when he had sat with her: listened to her story, fed her dainty, tasty things, and covered her in thick, soft blankets. When he had, at first, drawn her near.

‘You don’t have to do this. Really. Please –’

‘Hush, silly. I can, and I want to.’

_But I don’t even know you!_

It had truly seemed to her that the elf had been even more bewildered than her – high on adrenaline, substances, and mad with fear as she had been that night. And still he had played her music. And still... in a high-ceilinged, warm room with twelve mirrors for windows.

Slowly, Ciri feels the same burning heat rise to her cheeks as seems to be emanating from the touch of his hand. It’s embarrassing. It’s disorientating. It casts a net around her spirit akin to how it traps the unpleasant sensations his fervent embraces have left behind, and the tugging discomfort that has dulled over the day at last begins letting up in earnest.

‘Silly-silly girl. Running at the first rustles in the underbrush,’ the voice in her hair comes in-between his own quickening breath. ‘You are so fortunate, Ciri. So, so fortunate. You have no idea.’

‘Fortunate to not have a bullet in my head? To not be packed and parcelled and on my way – I heard you! I saw –’

‘Oh, how menacing,’ lips hug her pulse and long, knowing fingers dip down to where it’s hot and soft and moist. ‘Don’t chirp so loudly when all you know are your own impaired expectations. You did not hear anything. You did not see anything. You, Ciri, were asleep and stuffed and safer than you had ever been in your short and dicey life. You are still asleep, given how little gratitude and how much indignation and mindless fear I see.’

‘I only jumped through the first door. I did not ask you– s-stop. I – I don’t want – ah...’

‘But I missed you. I worried for you. I looked for you,’ the elf’s sardonic tone shifts abruptly, obtaining strange, so far entirely unheard of notes. Dripping with unfamiliar familiarity and... hurt? ‘Not much, Ciri. Not much for my help. I don’t want much at all. Only what is fair.’

She is pushed against the stove. The round metal handles press into her thighs, leaving her only one way to fall toward. His kisses have teeth and the heat that had healed her circulates, calling for nervous impulses to fuel the arousal emerging under deft, strong fingers circling her pearl.

A plastic bag with milk and butter rustles outside the window.

_His hands are so warm._

‘A communal? A carving knife? Oh, you people,’ contemptuous laughter blows across her cheek. ‘Priceless treasure rolling from pen to gutter, killing scum and beasts for profit. Unknown and unknowing even before herself. Toiling to get to where nobody returns from in order to rescue a killer already on his second lease. Oh, Ciri!’

Against the contrast of metal and his body she shifts unconsciously more and more securely into his lap, and senses the elf gets a great deal of pleasure from it. His arousal is distinct through layers of clothes – quality on his side and bottom shelf necessity on hers – and he sighs.

‘Truly, you are a gem. That you would have found me and not someone more opportunistic. That you would have found your way to the one who can make all your nightmares go _puff_. Wouldn’t that be nice, Ciri? Wouldn’t we like that? Wouldn’t we like to put these days of running relentlessly as a rat in its wheel behind us? Ah... that’s it, sweet one, just there. A half-life – high time you left it behind.’

Fingers that have been stoking her pleasure slip, tracing the folds of her skin and falling into her briefly, and Ciri wriggles. Only to have the touch disappear altogether in the next. The pressure against her back eases up. The hands disappear. He lets go of her.

Floorboards creak.

She breathes rapidly and clings to the rusting stove, pulling at the waistline of her trousers. Rapidly she regains sense of the sounds of the outside world. Of the count in her head: _five steps. Fifteen..._ The clock ticks behind the wall. The pipes belch.

‘Pour me water.’

‘It has gone cold,’ she replies.

‘Just as well. I despise tea.’

The girl’s fingers unclench and clench painfully around the handle of the heavy kettle. _That’ll have to do,_ she thinks. But either out of momentary sense of vertigo resulting from the stabilising circulation, or from the general malaise in her head, the swing she executes lands only half-way decently, knocking the lid off the kettle and spilling a fair amount as she hits the elf in the arm that is reaching out to support her.

‘Such manners,’ he sneers. ‘Be good, drink this. Calm yourself a little.’

Cheap porcelain presses against her lips, pushing her head upright as a palm comes to support at the back, and Ciri opens her mouth, accepting the bitter liquid and swallowing several mouthfuls before she can spit. Tiny brown leaves get stuck in her teeth. She realises it’s the cup the elf had tampered with. _Blackcurrant?_ She splutters and coughs and this time, through tears in her eyes, her swing lands as intended, kicking the mug out of his hand.

‘What the fuck do you want of me?’ she mumbles, tripping while pressing the kettle into his solar plexus as hard as she is able. ‘Why? Why did you follow me? If turning me in is not, then why – I have nothing –’

A wet kiss blesses her forehead.

‘Ah... Ciri,’ the elf whispers. ‘You awaken in me such... Perhaps you remind me of someone. Perhaps, someone dear. Once. How strange is fate, Ciri, have you ever thought?’

He pulls away from her and says the rest in a dying language’s lost dialect, and the girl presses her nails into her palms in despair.

_I wish I had never gone through that door. I wish he would stop saying my name. I wish..._

‘But I very much like your name.’

Tick-tock the clock goes; tick-tock.

Ciri stares, and a pair of eyes in which the aquamarine has almost entirely receded stare back.

‘How did you do that?’ she whispers.

‘How did I do what?’

‘How did you – how did you know... what I was just thinking. How do you know all these things about –?’

‘– you?’

The walls have ears – everyone knows that. If he is who she thinks he is then his loyalties grant him access to those ears. But... A nasty prickling sensation roars up in her as the man averts his eyes for the first time, licking his lip.

‘That, Ciri, was magic. Naturally, terrible black magic,’ he chuckles, looking at her conspiratorially. ‘You can think of me as of somewhat of a professor, if you like. A professor of black magic.’

‘There is no such thing as magic.’

‘Oh no?’

‘They’ll put you away for it,’ she shakes her head, which has begun spinning. ‘When I tell them, they’ll lock you up! They will shoot you dead.’

‘Who will shoot me?’

‘The higher echelons.’

‘Oh, Ciri. Cirilla. Zireael.’ A row of straight, white teeth lacking in canines flashes unpleasantly. ‘No echelons beyond the stars.’

He is mad. He is touched. This is a chantage and he is the charlatan. An agent only to himself! He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know anything about Geralt – where he is, why, or if... if he is still alive. He is just an opportunist taking advantage.

When she pushes at him with all her force and runs, she knows, dizzyingly, that that's not true. It is she who doesn’t know enough, who doesn’t know what she has gotten herself into, but she doesn’t care; she doesn’t want to know. She wants out. She wants to get away. Now!

The kitchen door springs open, and the floorboards groan.

Somebody somewhere unreachable listens to the radio.

The girl moves faster than the clock ticks.

Three locks.

Three locks await the girl at the padded front door, in the dull dark of the evening. She runs up to it. The chain’s dangling already, her fingers forget. Her heart tears at her throat. The locks open. She yanks.

And steps into a narrow hallway between the living room and the front door.

_No..._

The hallway is tiny. Even from here she sees: the elf stands before her short bed and, with his back to her, is removing his overcoat. He runs his hand through his hair, loosens his collar. Allowed some privacy by the rickety divider screen, in the faint light of a single street lamp erected, as per regulation, in front of the kindergarten, slender legs dangle off the cot.

Ciri’s hand searches blindly for the door handle.

Three locks.

Three locks await the girl in the dull dark of the evening. The chain’s dangling already, her fingers, they just forget, when her heart tears at her throat. The locks open. She yanks.

And a large, warm hand falls against her icy cheek, stroking, gliding, very softly, over her imperfection. Just so, until the elf’s fingers begin to squeeze the disfigurement, and force Ciri to open her eyes. Shadows move on the triangular face, gaping with darkness where she remembers eyes and a mouth.

‘Well, will you invite me inside?’

She takes him in against the door.

There is no undressing. There are arms under her body and spread thighs and a twitch, and she is unable to suppress a sob that tears from her throat; tender as she still is.

‘Shh-shh, let it happen. You can take me, sweet girl,’ the elf whispers. ‘You will like it a lot.’

She is not certain. She thinks she will hit that spot in his side raw by the end.

‘Yes, it hurts a little now. It hurts a little later,’ he squeezes her sides, holding her still as he pushes deeper inside; in search of parts of her that are not cold and battered and imbued with contempt for the world. ‘But in-between, there is only bliss.’

Her curses are more than alright, because he covers her lips with his in a moment, tearing at her through the choking gasps beyond which she will hear nothing of the world around anymore. It simply does not exist. Only this overwhelming, sick passion through which he seems to want to inflict as much pain on her as fits within himself. Of which his words speak not, but of which his teeth do.

Unlike formerly, he is not at all gentle. It’s not normal to be like this, she thinks, and she thinks of how little what she is and has seen is normal. His hands knead her tender with flushing marks, his lips and pleasant voice pressing wet promises of help, protection, and suns warmer than yesterday’s into hers. He doesn’t ask much in return – she will see. She has no idea. She feels Avallac’h wants to paint her with himself until she glistens, until nothing of her remains, so no one can find her. So no one can take her. She guesses it’s a selfish desire. She guesses he has no children of his own. She guesses it doesn’t matter much.

Silver threads skate along the high collar, glinting merrily under the meagre fare from the street lamp – as if from another era, and fading dim as an ember. He wants her to satisfy herself. To chirp. She wouldn’t mind, but she thinks he is being absurd. Hot palm lays down on her lower abdomen: it gives her surprising pleasure in conjunction with her fingers on her soaking lips and his relentless thrusts pressing her into the padding. Soon she moans into the man's mouth and feels him tremble. At her attempt to touch his face her hands receive a slap, though. A sharp jerk with his hips draws a pained whimper. She falls against his shoulder. But does not give up; she wants. So the elf gathers her wrists against her chest, clucking his tongue, and holds them in-between her breasts as his other hand crawls around Ciri's neck and presses down, strangling slightly. She listens to him move within her one wet slap at a time. His voice is like honey, smearing her with the heat that floods between her legs.

She imagines the poison accumulates in parts of him at intervals, and right now she touches upon its sources all at once through his stifling, devout embrace. With abrupt jerks he pulls her young body toward him as if wanting to weave her together with him. No further. Only further down his cock, until she sits nestled in his lap, straining and attempting to keep moving. Safe, stuffed, and warm. Up and down his cock deep-deep in-between her slick, tender insides. Where there’s sound. Where they are both warm. Where the tracks _should_ end if their world was not already long sick of itself and of its children.

But gently-gently, on and on, rolls and steams ahead, the light blue wagon.

The plastic bag with milk and butter knocks against the window.

Outdoors, a small east wind is picking up.


End file.
